It is hard for me to tell how significant your specific charges are. However, I think the BSA greatly appreciates the support of the LDS to Scouting. The LDS Church was given a charter in 1913 and was the first organization in the US to become an “official” sponsor of Scouting. The last time I looked the LDS had the largest number of units of any sponsoring organization. It also had the third most boys enrolled in any sponsoring organization. Scouting is so important to the LDS, I doubt if there is any LDS congregation of normal size that is not sponsoring a scout unit.

He said all boys should be able to participate regardless of sexual orientation. In other words they are not going to try to decide if a boy is homosexual. Does that mean you are in favor of a screening process? What do you think that screening process should be like?

Actually, his exact words were "all people", not "all boys". To me, the term "all people" means just that - Scouts as well as their leaders.

Yes, the mission of scouting fits in perfectly with their belief system. However, as in everything else, they do it THEIR way. It is that way if you employ them and their way is the only way if you befriend them. A friend in Utah (non-Mormon) was upset because her kids' Mormon friends were always asking them to go to church and making a big deal of their recruitment. She finally told the parents that her children could go to the LDS church after the Mormon kids had visited their Methodist church. Needless to say, the cross-visitation didn't occur and the LDS kids quit asking.

As an employer, they are great employees. They are honest, have great family values, etc. They make the amount of money they want to make and won't give extra time if that makes somebody else's business more profitable. Within Mormon companies, there appear to be "tracks" and non-Mormons are less likely to advance than Mormons. They are entitled to their way of doing things, but don't count on them to be playing on your team if you are the captain.

Wonder if Mormons would welcome a gay leader, just like they finally acknowledged that blacks can get into heaven, too.Get your facts straight. Mormons have never said Blacks could not get into heaven.

And it doesn’t matter what the Church feels about gay scout leaders. As a practical matter, if for no other reason, the BSA has found they can’t afford the law suits some gay leaders have been generating.

Romney simply said that all people should be allowed to join the Boy Scouts regardless of their sexual orientation. He didnt say he wants the Boy Scouts to teach boys how to be gay. He didnt say that it is perfectly OK to be a gay scout leader, or that he wanted openly homosexual men or boys openly practice their predatory habits in the Boy Scouts. Sheesh! You Romney bashers hear only what you want to hear, regardless of reality.

He doesn't have to say anything. One the camels nose is in the tent, it will be in the tent. He says its OK for gays to be in the scouts, guess whats next? It aint gonna be the scouts agenda, it'll be theirs! So I guess since Mitt didn't explicitly say gays shouldn't openly practice their preditory habits, we should just let them in and assume they won't? I'm proud to be a Mitt basher. Much better than being a Romney denier!

33
posted on 01/02/2008 1:50:25 PM PST
by Bommer
("He that controls the spice controls the universe!" (unfortunately that spice is Nutmeg!)

Our experience has been that Scouting is a type of youth group for the LDS church. If you join the Troop, they want you to come to the church. But they do not participate on Scout get-togethers. They remain separate and autonomous.

They are also the only troops to put their church affiliation in their flag. I personally think it is a great idea but I wish they participated more in Council stuff.

35
posted on 01/02/2008 1:59:23 PM PST
by AppyPappy
(If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem.)

That is taken care of by the other part of his statement. He said he agreed with the policy of the BSA choosing who they want as leaders, which means no homosexuals. I suppose there could be participation of homosexuals as merit badge councilors, etc. I think the BSA just doesn’t want practicing homosexual adults taking the boys out on trips. The clip was slightly ambiguous, and I suppose someone will soon be posting something more definitive.

Thank you. We seem to be in the minority but our experience is that they stay very separate, to the point of making extra work for camp staff. Others talk about what great scouters they are. I don’t know if their program even follows the guidelines that ours do but there appears to be no oversight from council about what they do. One difference pointed out by another non-Mormon scout family in Utah was that they don’t adhere to the two-deep rule of supervision.

First of all, congratulations on your Eagle Scouts! Good job mom and dad.

Yes, most of the LDS folks I know are good people and yet, prone to the foibles of too closely following church doctrine as it relates to their youth programs.

They believe that Scouting is a part of their church youth program, not an enhancement and therefore, they have the right to modify it as they see fit. In truth, Scouting is a separate entity that can be used for the furthering of their youth programs. Yet, most of the LDS leaders that have failing programs don’t understand why their programs are failing.

No disagreement on the perfecting of the Scouting program. I truly believe in the Scouting Mission and Values. Yes, there have been instances where LDS leaders have made things difficult with “unreasonable” demands(?), yet, we make a concerted effort to let them know it’s not about them, it’s about the boys.

The groups you have dealt with sound quite obstinate and unfortunately, secretive in their approach. Did you notice a lot of “basketball Eagles”? That’s what we call some of the programs here. My job is to bring most if not all of these units into the fold and get them to understand the importance of following the program as it is intended.

They can modify certain aspects to suit their religious beliefs (Sunday travel for instance), but I believe, based on your observations and experiences that those leaders you dealt with are doing their boys a grave disservice.

I am currently working with an LDS unit trying to get their program rebuilt after three years of basically no trained leadership with some church meddling thrown in and I occassionally run into some resistance. I just gently remind them of the agreement we made about me running a Boy Scouts of America program, not an LDS Boy Scout program.

I am training their adult leaders, teaching the boys how to be leaders and building a trained Troop Cmte. that will hopefully not slip backwards once I’m done. This unit had no boy led-boy run program, no committee, no trained adult leaders, etc.

It’s been almost a year now. I have about a year to go I think before I believe I’d feel comfortable turning them loose to see what they can do. I think the biggest thing that has helped me be successful to this point is their bishop who has bought into it whole hog. He wants a quality program, not only for his son, but all the others as well and doesn’t tolerate any unnecessary interference (what that means yet I don’t rightly know) in what I’m doing.

I even convinced him to let me take the Troop to Summer Camp last year over a Sunday. The deal was that their youth leaders would conduct a Sunday service and the boys had to kind of keep it quiet, but it was a victory in the sense that I was able to use logic and convince him of the difficulties in arriving on Monday morning as opposed to arriving on Saturday and be ready, rested and raring to go on Monday morning. Now we’ll see what we can do about this year since the camp we’re going to doesn’t allow Sat. arrivals.;-)

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